


Prototype

by SgtSalt



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, Pre-Slash, attempted hurt/comfort, it's the flirting via explosives part of the relationship, mostly blowing things up and drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 22:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20378929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SgtSalt/pseuds/SgtSalt
Summary: "Actually, Double-oh-seven, I've got a prototype I'd like your assistance in testing."Anger's easier to feel. Bond lets it continue carrying him over to the door after he's done pausing in surprise. "Not interested unless it explodes.""Oh," says Q in a voice that Bond could only describe as primly smug, "It does."— Bond is not an easy man to offer comfort to. Q just looks at failures and recalculates. A fic where a mission goes awry for someone else, but Bond comes back safe and sound and a bit rattled. Inspired by another fic that used a similar concept.





	Prototype

Q-Branch is never completely silent. It's part of why Bond goes there at 11:30 at night, back from a late return flight from Thailand. He'd scrubbed himself clean of July-rainforest grime in the locker room showers by the training gym, using cold water the entire time. He'd had enough of listening to heavy breathing in the weighty humidity of a jungle for a lifetime. 

Bond's in a regular suit, hair still damp, handing back his equipment in its neat little box. He's scowling because his face doesn't seem to want to try any other expressions yet.

"Back to the drawing board." He grinds out as Q takes the box back. 

The barely-there glance turns into an actual look. "I know." Q's expression, usually politely, poshly blank or disapproving, looks tenuous in some way. Apology, Bond realizes, and he looks away. He feels a molar creak. "And I'll be working on restructuring the field tourniquet, maybe add on a small torch for emergency cauterizing—" 

"I told him it _would_ work." Bond interrupts. "And now you've made a liar out of me." That's not the problem, and they both know it. Q couldn't possibly think otherwise; he was there during the call. He heard Bond frantically telling Reynard Abbott that help was coming, that he'd just have to hang on a bit, that the crazy bloody bastards down in Q-Branch knew their stuff enough that there was nothing to worry about, with the tourniquet in place.

Bond feels a heat afterwards, painful warning buckshot against his chest and neck, because there's the slightest twitch in Q's expression and Bond's seen it countless times on countless faces, will always recognize it: his lie's been found out, and now the person doing the finding-out is deciding what to do with him.

There's no pity, though. Bond waits a few moments, and when none bubbles up to the surface, it's relieving but also too much. Q won't address it — they don't _do that_, work is work and they're both used to partners and agents dying. Bond keeps his hands loose at his sides through sheer force of will. "So long as we're done here." And, already standing, off he turns.

Bond's halfway across the broad Q-Branch floor, acidic anger burning a hole from his heart down, when Q finally settles on what to say. "Actually, Double-oh-seven, I've got a prototype I'd like your assistance in testing."

Anger's easier to feel. Bond lets it continue carrying him over to the door after he's done pausing in surprise. "Not interested unless it explodes." 

"Oh," says Q in a voice that Bond could only describe as primly smug, "It does." 

*

Which is how sleeplessness and nerves sees them both in the firing range over an hour later. They'd exhausted Q's supply of prototype grenades — small, compact, and deadly, like most things Q's made since protesting exploding pens — after the first enthusiastic thirty minutes.

Possibly too enthusiastic.

"If I didn't know any better," Bond begins, adjusting the modified WA2000 held against his shoulder. The kickback is, miraculously, less than he thinks the rules of physics ought to allow. Common Q-Branch phenomenon, since this Q showed up. "I'd say you're humoring me out of pity."

"Not at all." Strictly speaking, this conversation is occurring at a shouted level, even if all Bond can hear is the muffled sound of Q's voice through his own ear protection. "I can't think of a better way to ensure the kickback reductions carry over into use from someone who's not going to bother reading the manual for best practices."

"I _know_ all the best practices for gun use, Q."

"Jamming a Calico 9mm pistol into an opened window to ensure it wouldn't close behind you isn't _best practices_— No, take out your earplugs. Put the gun down. This is a ridiculous way to have a conversation."

"We're not having a conversation." Bond parries without looking away from sizing up the target across the range. This gun rests on its skeletal support legs on the ledge in front of him, not supported by his shoulder. For the first time since Q suggested they have a target contest, Bond's suspicious as to his motives for handing him a weapon he doesn't have to rely on his weakened shoulder to aim. "We're having a contest."

Some kind of primal intuition, more than sight, tells Bond to look a bit to his left. It's enough to let him watch Q reaching up towards his head with his free hand. He takes out one earplug and arches an eyebrow at Bond. 

Bond's jaw clenches as he holds the gun steady still. Indecision doesn't change his grip. "I'd hate to ruin your hearing. Might make missions a lot more difficult."

"Would be a terrible inconvenience." Q agrees archly, removing the other earplug and dropping both in through a sleek rubbish bin door, disguised as part of the wall. 

Bond pulls the whole rifle up with himself silently, looking back up the range again as he goes. Supporting the whole weight of the gun lets his shoulder ache; one of many. The heft of it's familiar all the same. "I've got eleven bullets left in this case. I hope you've got a good reason for interrupting work."

Q stares at Bond in a way that makes the back of his neck and his knuckles itch. Whatever diagnostic test he’s running behind his inscrutable expression, however, must give Bond a pass, because he speaks up before Bond can throw himself back onto the range’s ledge to keep firing. "Because if we’re here too late, even the Black Rock on Christopher Street will be closed."

Bond's eye contact is a guaranteed thing for those next few seconds. Q looks away towards his own rifle, disarming it with practiced movements, as if he couldn't be bothered to anticipate Bond's response. 

"All this time, I assumed I'd be the one asking _you_ out first." 

"And all this time, you've not yet learned to stop assuming based on half-charted information." 

*

It's a quiet car ride. Bond realizes he couldn't imagine it a different way, but it still makes this tenuous chasm feel like one he's increasingly unprepared to leap over. 

Bond parallel parks into a metered spot, and Q moves for the first time since he'd opened his window without asking to touch Bond's car controls. "Hopefully," he says, and the way he cracks his neck makes Bond genuinely concerned for his spine, "the ticket for leaving your car parked here overnight isn't too high, because I'm not watching you drive home drunk after this." 

Bond's barely had a chance for his surprise to warm back into a smile before Q's let himself out and onto the sidewalk. 

* 

It's an hour later, or about twenty minutes before one of the latest-open bars in London officially closes and will be trying to politely kick them out, and Bond's staring across the bar while holding his fifth shot of whiskey. This one's a Laphroaig, the metal-and-herb taste of which he's liking alright, probably in part due to the four other distillery specials that came before it. 

"—unless of course you'd rather I just call in SCO19 to arrest the barman to get your attention." 

Bond snaps his gaze back from the employee food hygiene certifications posted on the back wall, over to Q. "I'm paying attention."

"Then what did I just say?"

"I'm only paying attention to the important bits." Dismissive, too flat. Bond drowns his glass under the quicksilver of Q's flat stare. Poisonous and falsely pretty. 

Q shifts forward, arms finally resting onto the bar countertop for the first time since they arrived. His sleeves are still down at his wrists, not rolled up halfway his forearms like Bond's own. Bond wonders, with the dull flickering of someone well on their way to processing an unwise amount of alcohol, if Q is part reptile. It's midsummer and hot enough outside that the only reason Bond didn't burn his hands on the steering wheel when he first entered his car earlier was because it was nearly midnight and the sun hadn't been out to bake it for a few hours. 

"Some people might try to give an awkward apology right about now."

Bond is suddenly immensely aware of every part of himself that isn't drunk yet. "Don't both—"

"And others still might try to give out sympathy about the fact that your mission got cocked up by unexpected interventions from an international crime syndicate—"

Bond can hear himself properly over the bar muzak when he tries again. "This conversation is not—"

Q ignores the two groggy, gossipy patrons who turn their heads at the abrupt volume change to look at them. "But I've some idea as to how useless all that is on someone like you."

"Someone like _me_—" Bond is halfway out of his seat and the number of people beginning to tilt towards them increases to five.

"So I'll keep this quick and discreet." Q hasn't so much as relinquished his new position of leaning against the counter. "I'm glad you made it back safely."

Bond doesn't like to call any emotion he experiences _embarrassment_, and he's not about to start now. Labeling the red-hot warning right at the edge of his vision might be a bad idea, anyway. "You mean your tech made it back safely? Prototype defects and all?"

Q's expression sharpens. It makes Bond think of a broken window; as dangerous as it is tragic. "Yes. As we've discussed, my technology failed to save a life. Just as your own expertise at keeping your_self_ miraculously in one piece failed to offer supernatural aid to a man who bled out in Doi Nang Non eight hours ago."

Bond makes a noise somewhere between assent and a growl. "Well if you'd figured out how to replicate what I do, I'd be out of a job, wouldn't I?" He leans in, fake smile buzzing across his face. The drone of alcohol in his limbs doesn't make him miss Q's shoulder when he pats it - the first time he's ever done so to this particular superior officer. "Think you said loser pays earlier?" And that's it - he turns to leave. About half of the remaining bar patrons are staring, which is probably the number of ones left sober enough to realize they don't care by the time Bond reaches the door, too. 

He tells himself he isn't disappointed that Q doesn't try to stop him past that point. 

* 

Except it can't be that easy, can it? Bond is pulled over within four minutes, quite a feat considering that he's drunk enough he's actually driving at a reasonable speed. The officer says something unusually polite, is stern, but doesn't so much as pull out a breathalyzer, which is about the time Bond realizes Q's somehow sent this man. While telling him something worth ignoring a clearly-drunk driver over. 

Bond considers texting at the next red light he stops at, but in his first show of good judgment all evening, his hands stay on the wheel. When he jams his key into the lock of his flat ten minutes later, he finds himself wondering if Q was expecting an angry voicemail or if he's expecting the exact petulant silence he's currently being treated to. 

Bond can't decide which possibility bothers him more, so he sticks with the option of least resistance. That turns out to be the bottle of Bell's scotch he has left in the cabinet, and then - an hour and a half of sitting on the couch later - his bed. 

* 

_Have you ever heard the expression 'lose the battle, win the war'? Of course you have. But I imagine it's a phrase you despise. I certainly do. Terrible comfort to those of us who are competitive by nature._

It takes Bond several moments to register who the text is from, considering the sender is a series of numbers that he thinks is too long to rightfully be another phone.

_I'm actually less likely to continue this over text. And while sober. _

_In case there was confusion about your timing._

Bond then gets up to go to the washroom and pretend that gargling mint mouthwash will help him feel and look less hungover. His phone doesn't rattle with an incoming text again until he's back in the bedroom to get clothes. It's serendipitous enough timing that he half-wonders if Q has his flat bugged, as well. Or if he's just an uncannily lucky bastard.

_I'm not initiating conversation. I'm trying to gauge if you're too hungover to bother inviting back for another prototype demonstration. My readings on quality might be more accurate if they can account for your creative uses of equipment._

Bond does some quick mental math. It's a little before noon on a Saturday, and this implies Q got...apparently just enough sleep to think that crafting new flash grenades was a good idea. Bond knows less about himself than he likes to let on, but he knows enough to connect the dots here. It's a coping mechanism. An _invitation_ to a coping mechanism. 

One that explodes, in particular. Bond has a memory of last night that's clearer than he'd like — alcohol never does quite enough damage anymore. He remembers stalking away.

He finishes getting dressed without responding, but he finds he's heading towards the parking garage once he's run out of layers to put on. 

Q's omniscience continues.

_If you're headed to the liquor store first, do us a favor and pick up something nicer than whatever our first round was last night._

Bond doesn't send back his reply — _It's technically illegal to do this while I'm off the clock, Q_ — until he's in his car. At least there's no way Q's CCTV access lets him see the smirk Bond stifles before pulling out. 

Wouldn't want him to count this as a win before the real thing's even started.


End file.
